Lost and Found
by R Coots
Summary: So Boss Johns spent alot of years hunting Riddick across the galaxy. How did he go about that? And whatever happened to Eve? Riddick AUish. Mature for language and rape. And some violence.
1. Lost

Lost

Johns hadn't known at first. That was part of what made it so bad. It'd been so long since he'd heard from his boy; so long since he'd gotten any sort of update except what that came across guild channels. He hadn't really registered the fact that it had been months since there'd been word.

As a father, that was inexcusable. How could he have gotten so out of touch? How had he managed to alienate his only son so badly that he hadn't even known where he was, much less who he was chasing? And, sin of sins, how could he have not clued into the fact that he'd dropped off the map?

That he'd died?

He knew the answers of course. They were the same as they'd always been. His boy was rash and impulsive and full of a need to prove himself as his own man. He'd lost his son to the job years ago. First the Military Police. Those fucking bastards were spread so thin and had so many claims to their loyalty that it was a wonder they ever got anything done at all. And what they _did_ get done was all focused around the high population planets like Helion Prime, or trouble spots like the Tangiers system.

Then there'd been that dust up on the Howling Planet. And the hard headed little fuck had decided he'd do so much better on his own. Hunting big time scores would get him so much further than answering the beck and call of the lard-assed politicians who went to war over a ball of dirt nobody wanted.

Never mind the fact that he didn't have a crew to back him up. If he was going to be taking down big money targets, having fallen straight into the same business as his hard ass father, he was at least going to do it _his_ way. No splitting the take. No trusting anyone to have his back. Especially when so many crews would be perfectly willing to throw him out the airlock for a bigger share of the score once they'd caught their target. Oh no. He, William J. Johns, was going to make a name for_ himself_, fuck you very much.

That had been one of the last big arguments; and it played through his head over and over as he downed shot after shot of the rotgut this place called whiskey. It hadn't even taken place in person. He'd had to go and yell at his son over a comm line, tell him all the glory and money in the galaxy weren't worth shit if he ended up injured or worse, dead. God damn fucking prophetic words. Why the fucking hell hadn't he kept his mouth shut and just wished his boy good luck? Why the fuck had he pushed the boy so hard he'd taken the throttle with both hands and headed out after the worst sort of motherfuckers the galaxy had ever spawned?

The bartender eventually left the bottle sitting where he could reach it. He didn't care, so long as a new one came when the old one was empty. His quarters were just down the street. He didn't need to worry about making back when they finally booted him out to haul his drunk ass home. This part of the city was full of washed up mercs. Most of whom couldn't scratch together the cost of a cheap bottle of whiskey. But if they were lookin' for easy ways to land a few dollars, there were just as many around here who'd give them a bullet between the eyes for their trouble, drunk or not. No. The only thing he'd have to worry about on the way home was not passing out in the street and waking up naked.

At least it was better than sitting at home. He'd had quarters near the Guildhall, but the options for getting wasted were limited. He'd run out of beer last time he'd been home, and he hadn't gotten a chance to restock before he heard the news. The place smelled of age and memories of a time when he'd paid more attention to hunting targets that weren't all the way across the galaxy. Fuck, there were still holos sitting around the place, dust filmed and staticy, but clear enough. His boy, with that first air gun he'd gotten. The look on his face as he learned to aim and fire it. Like he'd found a friend.

It would have been worrying if he hadn't been so sure his boy was more interested in catching criminals than he was in becoming one. It was generally safer too; unless you went after one of the ones that really should have been put down the first time they landed in trouble, rather than risk them getting loose again to wreak even more havoc.

Safer. Hah! And who the fuck kept those motherfuckers alive in the first place? Not the judges. Not due process. Not any of the millions of laws on who knew how many planets with semi-functioning governments. Fucking coorperations. That's who. The Company and its compatriots. All the private contractors and guards who got paid according to how many prisoners they had on the books. Sure, a lot of the stupid ones got themselves killed while they were inside. And the graft on the part of the guards was probably even calculated into the budgets of those moneyed assfucks who built and ran the places in the first place. But the ones who didn't die. The ones who lived.

The ones who got out?

Fucking animal. No good motherfucking sonofabitch piece of shit had killed his only son! The only chance he had of leaving something good to the universe. Never mind the fact that that nobody had seen hide or hair of the bastard since the _Hunter-Gratzner _had left port. Never mind it had gone down with only a Mayday call to mark its location. Never mind any of that. He'd seen the footage. The choppy visuals and scrambled audio of the insurance team. People had made it out of the wreck. His boy had been one of them. There was no other option. No way he could imagine it going down. There'd been footprints. Human footprints.

The whiskey was gone. Where was the bartender with more? He waved the thing and called hoarsely, but the miserable shit didn't appear. Muttering to himself, he leaned over to reach for the stash under the bar.

But instead of wrapping his fingers around the neck of the half full bottle of rum sitting there, he missed, lost his balance, and cracked back of his head on one of the other stools as he made his ungraceful way down to the sticky, filthy floor.

His head rang. His eyes refused to focus. He had the certain knowledge that all of that liquid he'd just swallowed was about to come boiling back up again. And it was going to hurt like holy hell too. And, worst of all, he could see a pair of a familiar pair of boots not a meter away. Damnit to fucking hell anyways, when had _she_ shown up?

"Gotta say Boss, you look like shit."

He mumbled something that might have been "Go fuck yourself," if he'd been able to get his lips to work properly. She didn't take the hint.

There was some part of him, some rational part of him that said it was a good thing she'd come to scrape him off the floor. The rest of him was shoving that rational bit of thought down a very deep hole and making promises to himself about docking her pay. Or firing her altogether. That sounded like a good idea. He could cite the fact that she clearly didn't have enough respect for him to let him sit and drink himself blind. Because as her Boss it was absolutely his right to throw things in the shitter and say to hell with any sort of responsibilities he may have.

That sounded like something Will would have said.

His son was dead! His son had been dead for months and he hadn't even known!

"I know Boss. It's a shit universe."

He couldn't figure out if he'd said anything out loud, but the gentleness in her voice was enough to give him pause. Who the fuck was this and where had his old first officer gone? But all he managed was another incoherent "Fuck it" as she hauled him over the doorsill and out into the street. The neon lights of all the signs burned, and the stench of the place was an assault of the worst sort. Piss and vomit. Trash heaps and the undoubtabley countless numbers of vermin living in the alleys. Something had died nearby. He could smell the decomp from here. Probably not a person. Maybe a dog or something.

"You get a pass," Dahl was saying, and he realized she'd kept up a steady stream of talk since they'd hit the street. "It's a fucking shit thing to find out, especially as part of the monthly tally." She cursed with no venom. "What that fucker thought he was doing posting the lists like that and not giving you any sort of heads up…"She trailed off and sighed before hitching his arm a little further across her shoulders. Man shoulders, he thought blearily. She was better at his back than ten men, and had been mistaken for one on several occasions. Which unfortunately tended to send most of the pretty women running when they'd realized their mistake.

She laughed shortly and shoved him out of the way of a noodle vendor going hell-bent-for-leather in the opposite direction. "Ain't my love life you gotta worry 'bout now Boss. It's that bastard Herne. You don't shake this obsession with drink and quick, he's gonna throw everything he's got into this. And _then_ where the fuck will we be? He's already pulled this stunt. What the fuck will he do next? Start stealing nodes off the _Griffin_? Bastard's a sneaky little shit, I'll give him that."

Johns tripped and nearly ripped himself out of her hold as she maneuvered them through the door and started up the stairs to his tiny apartment. She kept him from splitting his head open by dint of putting all her weight into being a counterbalance, and then let him slump down on the scuffed plascrete. He could feel himself swaying, and his stomach was still looking for way to be rid of all that booze. But something of her words must have sunk in. He growled and scrubbed at his face, wishing his brain would catch up with the rest of him. Or that he'd catch up with his brain.

He wasn't sure at this point.

She'd dropped into a slouch across from him, blue eyes calculating as she watched him try and pretend to understand. He wished she'd turned up earlier. Fuck, he wished she'd come out with him to start with. Then they could both be blind drunk, and she wouldn't be able to say so many things that sounded like sense but didn't make any _at all_.

Finally she sighed. "You ain't good for anything right now Boss. 'Cept maybe pouring more poison down your throat. And all that's going to do is get you dead."

He glared at her. He felt nicely numb, thank you very much. For now he seemed to have lost the urge to go and shoot anything that moved down in the Guildhall; just for being alive when his son wasn't. Maybe he'd try that later. But he'd rather see if he could dull the pain a bit more before going and trying it out.

"C'mon Boss. Sitting in the stairs isn't gonna help things at all. Can't get drunker and you might get mistaken for a bum and rolled out the door if someone finds you here." She had his hands again and was levering him back up on his feet. He tried to help, overbalanced again, and nearly face planted right into the leading edge of one of the steps.

Somehow, with a lot of cursing, more stumbling, and a few fresh bruises, they made it up the stairs and into his apartment. By then his eyes were crossing, pretty much carrying him, and he might have even tried to cop a feel at some point. That was probably when she dropped him on the couch and stormed out, but he couldn't really be sure. He was too busy trying not to throw up all over the floor while rapidly losing consciousness.

One last though drifted through his head before he gave up completely.

Somehow. Someway. He was going to find Riddick.

And then he was going to kill the motherfucking bastard.

~LaF~

Morning started sometime in midafternoon. At least, that was his best guess. His window didn't face east. The sunlight currently hammering him in the face might have been weaker for all the smog in the air; but that didn't matter to the hangover currently doing its best to make him wish he were dead.

Fuck that. He _did_ wish he was dead. Or, barring that, he wished he knew for sure that Riddick was dead.

Snarling curses on the murderer, himself, and the sun; he crawled off the couch, managed to keep from tripping and slamming into the wall, and staggered into the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later he staggered back out, having dumped a whole bottle of pain killers all over the floor. He'd managed to save two, flushed the ones that landed in the john and rinsed the ones in the sink down the drain. The food unit wasn't worth the trouble at the moment. Instead he concentrated on making the strongest pot of coffee possible with the battered and much abused coffeemaker that sat in pride of place on the countertop. Fucking-A, he wasn't home often, but when he was he'd have _real_ coffee, and not that freeze dried shit the Guildhall kept out for common consumption. The coffee maker had been worth the expense, even if he didn't use it very often.

The first pot tasted of minerals and shit, and he had to make another to get the feeling of having swallowed powdered aluminum out of his mouth. Cup in hand, he scraped himself together, found some clothes that didn't smell like he'd been rolled down an alley while wearing them, and headed out. His head was still pounding, his eyes were still bleary, and his boots weighed on his feet like a pair of plascrete shoes, but he had a goal.

He was going to go digging through everything he could lay his hands on concerning the _Hunter-Gratzner_ crash. He was going to turn over every rock and leaf and bit of debris he could find and he was going to get a bead of this fucker Riddick.

And then he was going to hunt the bastard down and kill him. Money be damned. This was revenge.

~LaF~

Two weeks later, he was buried so deep in printouts and data disks that he didn't even notice the coffee cup that appeared on the table at the end of the couch. He did however, pay attention when the stacks of reports were abruptly cleared out of his field of vision and a steaming plastic plate of…something was set down instead.

"What the fuck," he said blankly.

"This is the first and only time," Dahl said. She was standing with her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. "I'm not your wife or your maid. Neither are you worth anything dead, except to all those fucks you've dropped in slam. So. You are going to eat. And you are going to shave. And you are going to take a shower if I have to haul your ass in there and toss you in fully clothed."

Johns blinked up at his second in command and decided that he should probably get his ass off the couch. He might give her orders and cut her pay, but at that moment he fully believed she'd do what she promised. And she'd manage to make it as painful as possible along the way. She was many things, but she'd never been gentle. He levered himself up onto stiff legs, snagged the coffee, and headed for the bathroom before she could collar him and drag him there by main force. Hopefully the food would still be hot when he got out.

By the time he emerged, face still burning from the aftershave, she'd eaten all the food, picked up all the files, and was buried in them up to her elbows. He raised an eyebrow at her, and she pointed her chin at another plate, sitting on the one end table that wasn't held level by means of a bunch of junk shoved under the legs. Johns shook his head and dug in, leaning over her shoulder to see if she was coming up with anything different than he had.

"This all you have to go on," she asked as she set aside the report on the Mayday and picked up the initial insurance briefing. It was very brief. Abortive even. He hadn't been able to make heads or tails of it. Teeth marks on bone, desert planet, suns. Plural. And then the transmission had been cut by a massive sandstorm and the team dropped off the radar entirely. No word yet on whether there would be another one sent out. For such a backwater planet, so far off the normal space routes, it sure had a prodigious death rate. Starting with a group of exploratory miners and ending with the investigation team.

Something in his brain clicked, and he sat up straight. "Fucking hell," he breathed.

Dahl twisted around to stare at him. "What?"

"The miners," he said, and started digging through the paperwork for the file he needed. He hadn't been able to get the original date on the survey team that had built the settlement on planet, but he'd seen a mention somewhere…There it was.

"Here." He shoved the slim sheaf of readouts in front of Dahl's face, and she was forced to take them or get slapped with them. "A whole fucking settlement. They didn't just set down and take soil samples. They had buildings. The start of a mine. This lists _families_ that went there. So," he stabbed the papers with a finger and ignored the glare she was giving him. "Where's the emergency ship? Mandatory for any semi-permanent in the ass crack of nowhere. Shit hits the fan and its _weeks_ till a beacon can bring help. They had to have _some_ way of getting off planet in a hurry."

"Boss, nothing says they had a backup ship. Fuck." She threw her hands up in the air and almost lost the files in the process. "Nothing says any of them could even pilot a ship. And it was an Independent operation, not run by the Company or anyone else we can track. Who's to say they thought that far ahead."

But Johns was up on his feet, and there was certainty running through his veins now. It fit. With giant fucking gaps in their knowledge, but it fit. And from what he'd heard about and dredged up on this Riddick character so far, the man was a consummate survivor. There were stories of what the man had done in the prisons he'd been incarcerated and escaped from. Of the pits they'd thrown in him that he'd crawled back out of.

And he could pilot.

"Even if they weren't affiliated with the Company or one of the smaller competitors, they had to have someone they were feeding the samples back to. A financier or a venture capitalist of some sort, looking to carve his piece out where the Company didn't care to go. They could scrape together the cash for the mining equipment, they'd have managed a way to at least get out of atmo and make try at sticking their thumb out in the shipping lanes."

"And what?" Dahl slapped the papers down and stood to meet his eyes. "You think someone survived that crash? Used the 'emergency ship,'" she didn't make quotes in the air, but she came damn close, "to get off that rock?"

He just looked at her.

She growled and braced her hands on her hips. "You think _Riddick_ got off that rock."

"If it wasn't him and Will was alive, I'd be standing here listening to him brag about how he survived. Right now." Johns crossed his arms and glared and forced himself to forget the fact that his son had been so pissed off at him the last time they spoke that the little shit might have just let him sweat a bit before putting in an appearance.

Part of him still hoped that was possible. He had a feeling that part of him would always be watching the door, watching for the cocky little bastard to come waltzing in.

Dahl's eyebrows met in the middle and her jaw clamped shut as she tried to win the staring contest. But he was an old hand at this, and knew that her urge to talk would eventually get the better of her.

"Fine," she bit out. "Assuming," she held up a hand before he could start to gloat. "Assuming you're right. Assuming you aren't so starved you've gone delusional. Assuming that motherfucker really did make it off that rock. The rock that swallowed up _three_ separate groups of people without a fucking trace, what do you plan to do?"

Johns nearly laughed at her. If it hadn't been for the circumstances, he probably would have. Instead, he took a swig of the coffee he'd left abandoned on the end table and sat back down. "What the fuck do you think I plan to do? I'm going to find the fuck. And then I'm going to make him tell me _exactly_ how he managed to kill me son." He looked up at her so he could have something to focus on besides all the memories running through his mind's eye on fast forward. She was good enough to pretend she couldn't see that his jaw was starting to wobble. "Then I'm going to kill that fucking bastard and to _hell_ with the bounty."


	2. and

And

It wasn't that easy of course. Nothing ever was. For one thing, even if Riddick _had_ taken the emergency skiff off planet, there was no way to track where he might have gone until he popped up on the radar again. And that was assuming he managed to hitch a ride in the first place. M-344/G was the back end of nowhere. And the chances of dying in space were far higher than those of being given, or stealing, a ride to more populated areas.

Johns knew all this. He also knew that Riddick was a consummate survivor. He was counting on it. In the meantime, he'd exhausted all his leads and didn't have the leverage to force anything more out of Herne or any of his other contacts. The Councilman had let a few things drop here and there once the merc Boss showed back up in headquarters, and none of it was good.

The insurance company was taking their investigation slower after that first team had vanished. The cops out of Tangiers had started up an investigation based on the value of some of the stuff in the shipping containers. They were keeping their books closed though, and rumor had it one of the independent mercs had been contacted to help out.

Johns could have told them what a mistake that was. Mercs worked for folks who would pay. Law enforcement had a disturbing habit of stabbing the unGuilded in the back and claiming they'd been the ones to close the case, not the merc. In all likelihood, the theoretical merc knew that. The cop would have ended up hung out to dry, and rightly so.

What it all boiled down to, once he was fully sober and had a chance to think things through, was that hunting Riddick was a waste of time and effort if he didn't have anything to go on. And there were plenty of other fish in the sea. After a couple of pointed remarks on the part of Lockspur, and a snide demand for a cash advance by Dahl, he threw his gear in his bags, made sure all the nodes on the _Griffin_ were charged, and started scanning the boards for a good target.

Another week, another mention of how nice it would be to have any money left after having to pay rent on the Guild bunks, and Johns finally found someone he knew they could handle without getting cheated or killed. And it was worth it all right. Five hundred thousand U.D.s for a ginger midget with a penchant for setting things on fire. Not bad really. And how hard could it be?

~LaF~

Five years. Five fucking years. Johns looked down at the dubious jar of something called Liquid Bread that was sitting in front of him and tried to decide if it was still worth all this hassle. Not hunting Riddick. No. That would always be worth it, to find out just what had happened to his son. But all the in-between shit? Hunting cons, flying all over the Arm and eating in some of the shittiest places he'd ever seen. Even some of the station MREs were better than the so-called "food" he'd been offered. Or worse, had to pay for.

And he wasn't getting any younger. Sure, his body wasn't showing its age as much, thanks to all that time in cryo. But he was getting tired of it all. By this time he should have been trying to make that last big score. Or working his way into an Admin position back at Guild Headquarters. Even a position in security on planet. Semi-retirement. Or at least looking into it. His reflexes wouldn't be with him forever.

Instead he'd gone from the firebug, who was worth _far_ more than five hundred thousand, given all the trouble he'd been, and on into a string of other targets. By ones and two and even threes, he and his crew had hunted them down, rounded them up, and dropped them back with this slam or that. Negotiate the fee; get their cash, stuff as much of it as he could into his accounts, and on to the next.

At least he'd managed to round out his crew a bit. Moss had joined up a couple years back. He was a good man in a pinch, without any of the bad habits that a lot of long time mercs seemed to pick up along the way. Which was a good thing, considering he'd come straight out of military service. Sometimes those service of their planet types got really squeamish about some of the things they had to do to catch these fucks. And other times they let the power of a gun and a uniform cloud logical thinking and acted like a gun and a guild badge meant they could rewrite the rules. There were no limits for those ones. Anything went, so long as they got the job done. And they _might_ catch their targets, but once they'd shot up a marketplace or put civilians in danger that tended to be it. Local authorities weren't too happy with that sort of behavior, especially from the people who were supposed to be _hunting_ criminals, not acting like them. More often than not the merc would ended up booted from their Guild, and rightly so.

Better yet, Moss hadn't batted an eye when he'd heard what his cut was going to be. And why. All he'd done when Johns had laid out the long term mission and the reason for the shitty pay was grunt, take another pull on the beer sitting in front of him, and shrug. "Got my severance pay to tide me over," he'd said. "And I've heard of this Riddick character. Supposed to have served with my old unit in the Wailing Wars." He'd stopped and looked down at his bottle. "Well, what would have been my unit, if I hadn't busted my leg just before they shipped out." There was something hard in the man's eyes when he'd looked back up at the mercs in front of him. "You think the fucker's managed to stay alive all this time, I'm with ya."

It was a good start, and the man had fit in with the others as if they'd all been working together for years, instead of having just met. A shared background in military ops probably helped with that.

None of that helped him with the kid sitting in front of him. Barely old enough to shave, and looking beyond uncomfortable in the dingy bar they were currently parked in; the boy was lean, jittery, and mulishly determined to make a good impression. Unfortunately, shooting rabbits at a monastery and fending off the occasional group of drunken treasure hunters wasn't enough to keep him alive in the world he was trying to enter. It was barely enough to get him an apprenticeship; he'd need a lot of work before he was worth full pay. And going after some of the marks Johns and his crew targeted was just asking to get sent home in shrink wrapped plastic.

So what the boy was really asking for, although he didn't know it yet, was passage and a bit of free advice on their way back to Lupus 5. Once they got there, Johns would probably point him in the direction of one of the more formal training institutions, or even send him to the cops. He had potential, and he had the motivation, he just didn't have the skill. And there were only so many ways to could split a bounty before it got to be too much to afford anyways.

He was just about to cut the boy, Luna, off before he could babble any more about seeing his father die and his mother and sister violated by a gang of murderers. All he needed was for this kid to stop and take a breath. Seemed the boy figured that if he could just keep talking long enough, he'd find a place on the crew. Poor kid. Stuck on this backwater and nothing to be done about it. And he wasn't helping his chances any with all the chatter.

Fortunately an interruption came in the form of Dahl, and Johns knew by the look on her face that the news wasn't good. And not the "the techs say it'll be another three days before the ship will fly again" variety. He already knew _that_. No, this was about to get much, much worse.

Excusing himself from the boy, who looked more than a little intimidated by the scowl on Dahl's face, he jerked his chin at his second and walked off to a corner that was mostly out of earshot of the rest of the room. Not that there were very many people around to overhear, but it paid to be careful.

Instead of speaking, she handed him a data tablet. And for the second time in five years, the bottom dropped out of his world.

There, in a flickering holographic, was Riddick. Scowling, broad shouldered and bald, his eyes were hidden by a pair of goggles. Home planet unknown. Race unknown. Shined eyes. Former inmate of at least five max, double max and triple max slams. Ranger. Traitor.

And then the bounty. 1.5 million. Obscene. Much, much more than any slam would offer. More than the Company had ever offered, back when they thought the fuck was alive and killing wherever he felt like it. Who the fuck could be offering so much money for someone everyone had thought was dead? And why? And how did they expect anyone to find him anyways? For that sort of money, they'd better have a damn good piece of intel. Or else they were just stirring the waters. And _none_ of the guilds looked on that very favorably. It was a good way to find yourself shit out of luck later on, when there was _real_ trouble to be taken care of.

But the tablet didn't have any more info. And until he could get back to his ship he wasn't going to be able to find out. The channels around here weren't secure enough for that sort of news to just be floating around the ether.

Well, there went the idea of getting this Luna kid into a place where he could get any sort of training. No stopping on Lupus 5 for them. It was straight for the throat on this one. 1.5 million was nothing to sneeze at and every idiot with a gun and a crew stupid enough to follow was about to descend on this like a whole swarm of gnats.

Including him. He and his crew might be on the opposite side of the galaxy, but that wasn't about to stop him.

He sent Dahl off with a wad of cash and orders to round up the guys and see if the tech could get the ship up and moving in half the time he'd predicted. Then he turned back to the boy, still clutching his jar of beer and looking far too hopeful. The vidscreen in the corner was saying something about Aquila Major and an invasion, but that was of secondary importance right now. At the moment, he had a young man to let down and a killer to go out and hunt.

~LaF~

He didn't know what pissed him off more. The two extra days he'd had to spend on Sol Castries, or the fact that he'd missed his target. Again. Fucking bastard. Add the Necromonger invasion of Helion Prime to the mix and the whole trip was the next thing to wasted.

Just like this planet.

Johns pulled the hood of his cloak a little further around his face and stared around him. They'd landed in the shadow of a collapsed building, and with the help of a few more pieces of debris and rubble, had managed to camouflage their location. At least, he hoped they had. It probably wouldn't pass muster up close, but it should fool sats and the casual eye. Hopefully the inattention to detail on the part of the Necros up in the atmosphere would extend to keeping an eye on what was going on landside. They may have pulled out, but they were still up there, and he wasn't interested in having any of those death obsessed motherfuckers up there come down and take any sort of interest in what he was doing here.

"Boss," Dahl sounded supremely skeptical. "What the fuck are we going to find here?"

Johns looked back at his team, each shrouded and cloaked in tattered old robes. All the obvious weapons were back on the ship and all the concealable ones were with them. In Dahl's case, he'd quit wondering how it was she managed to tuck so many different guns in so many different places. They were as ready as they were ever going to be, bar running across a Necromonger patrol.

Their first target was the Capitol building. Or what was left of it. Maybe they could find some clues in the remains. Old data. Something. Anything to explain what the hell had happened here.

It took a while. More than a while. It took picking their way through streets littered with rubble, crawling over the remains of once strong walls, and generally slogging through the wreckage of a once proud civilization. Shutting his eyes to misery around him wasn't such a hard thing in the normal course of things. The places he went hunting, destitution was the norm instead of the strange.

But this was different. Scrawny children sorted through the leftovers, sometimes with an equally gaunt adult nearby, but generally alone. The few adults he did see were often injured, hobbling along with whatever they could scrounge in place of a crutch or a cane. There were more than a few limbs missing. Or eyes. Or, in one remarkable case of a woman clutching a limp little bundle to her chest, a tongue. The sight stayed with him long after they were out of earshot of her heart-stricken wails.

The core of the city was flattened. Absolutely smashed. The great promenade that would have led to the Capitol Building was cratered as if meteors had hit. Or rather, as if uncounted numbers of enemy ships had set down, not caring what was beneath them or. He could see the burns and blast residue where the drives of the Necromonger ships had made their mark. Probably during takeoff.

He crouched at the edge of one of the pits, fingering the melted and warped material that was all that was left of the paving in the area. Rubbing it proved that they built with some sort of silica composite, probably using up all the sand that surrounded the city. The vulture traders and scientists and who knew who else would probably gobble all this up eventually. Hawking the remains of the great city of New Mecca. Last stop of the Necromongers. Only surviving planet.

For now.

Why had they quit? Pulled out and not destroyed the place? They never left a planet as anything other than a total wasteland. The lone Icon still planted down at the far end of the Promenade was reminder enough of what happened to most of the planets that came to their attention.

"Boss," Dahl shifted uneasily. Johns looked back at his crew. They were on edge. And facing out. Probably because there was a loose ring of locals closing in around the; and they looked just about desperate and fucked up enough to actually try something.

Well, here went nothing. "Who's in charge here," he said as he turned all the way around. "Or is this place so fucked up that you're all just acting like a bunch of wild dogs?"

There was the usual pause as they sorted themselves out, and a man separated from the group. Lean and dark, his beard needed to be trimmed and his eyes were sunken hollows. His robes hung on him like he'd lost weight and gained years in direct exchange. He seemed to have two working legs, but his left hand was missing fingers, and the other arm was up in a crude sling. But he straightened as much as he could. The lift in his chin and the spark in his eyes were probably as much to prove to his people that he was capable as they were to let the mercs know that he was as close to a real official as they were going to get. "My name is Ali Hes-Am. I am what is left of the Council. To whom am I speaking?"

Moss was shaking his head, but Johns ignored him. "My name is Johns. These," he gestured at his crew, "are my people. We're mercs. Came looking for a bounty we heard was in the area." He looked up at the Icon in the middle distance. "Didn't expect to land in the middle of an invasion."

The crowd shifted, and Hes-Am's eyes glittered as his tilted his head. "The invasion is over. There is only the aftermath. The terrible heartbreak of survival." He followed Johns' gaze to the Icon and his lips pursed. Behind him, the crowd was starting to mutter. Johns stepped forward slightly to plug the gap in the array of his crew and waited. They weren't in the clear yet.

"Come. We will speak you and I." Hes-Am beckoned with his free hand and started off down the wide street. "You will tell me who is so horrible that you would disregard all the news in the Arm and set yourself in the path of Death itself."

"Man's got a way with words," Moss muttered quietly. Johns shot him a look, and then then swung in behind their guide. So long as they were getting answers, he didn't really care how poetic the man got.

There was a building in a park about three hundred meters down the street. Somehow the area had avoided the worst of the damage. The only evidence of the attack was a few cracks in the stonework and a few broken columns. Hes-Am stopped on the dais in the center of a round room just off the entry and waited for them to catch up.

Dahl was muttering about grit and needing a bath to wash all this stink off, and Lockspur and Moss were taking it in turns to rag her a bit. Not too much, in case she decided their faces would look better swollen and bruised, but enough. They were a good crew, all things being equal, and Johns was damned glad he had them to watch his back. Even happier that they were willing to follow him into such a shit hole. Maybe if Will had taken a partner at least. Maybe then his son would be alive.

He hauled his thoughts back on track with an effort that left him slightly disoriented. And he realized Hes-Am was talking to him.

"-gave us the first chance to convert," he spat. "As if any of us would have willingly given up our faith." Hes-am's eyes were distant. "I am told though, that what came next was so far beyond the imaginings of even Mohammed himself that some threw themselves at the Necromongers, demanding Conversion." He went silent another moment, and Johns frowned. Was he finished? Or was he so caught up in the past that he'd forgotten he had people with him?

The three remaining fingers on the man's right hand were turning white around the knuckles. But after another second or so he blinked and looked back up at them. "So. You were going to tell me for whom you have come looking. And perhaps show me some form of identification, to prove that you are not just scavengers come pick over the spoils."

"Coulda asked for that earlier," Dahl muttered as she threw her cloak back over one shoulder and started digging in her belt for her ident card. Johns shook his head and reached into a chest pocket, handing the badge of their Guild over for their host's inspection.

He looked it over carefully, then the others as Johns' crew passed them up or held them out for him to see. Finally he gave a half smile and a small bow. "Forgive me. If I had asked you in the street, some of the others might have taken exception to…"

"Our wealth," Johns finished when the man faltered. "All those high minded ideals of yours seem to have gone a bit sideways now haven't they?"

Another twist of the lips. "You might say that. It has, you could say, become rather Darwinian out there. They do not harm me because I am attempting to assist in finding food and shelter for the many who cannot do so for themselves. But if it weren't for my connections with those in less…devastated areas, I could very easily have found myself sharing a pallet with the dead. They blame the Council you see. For prevaricating too long."

Lockspur snorted and Dahl muttered something under her breath about politicians and fucking each other. Johns gave them both a look and they snapped their jaws shut.

"But you are not standing here covered in armor and weapons simply because you feel like it. And you certainly did not put forth the effort to sneak past the Necromongers," he pointed at the ceiling above, "to count coup. So. What bounty brought you to a planet that has always had so very few?"

"Riddick," Johns said. "Richard B. He's an escaped convict. A murderer. There was a sheet posted with this as the planet of origin." He trailed off. The man's eyes had widened, and then narrowed. He knew something. Give him enough lead and…Sure enough, he had something to say.

"It was a private party putting up the bounty, wasn't it?" Hes-Am went to go sit on the steps coming off the dais. He pulled a small box from under his robes and poked around a bit before pulling out a half-burnt cigarette. A little more searching and he came up with a packet of matches. "One point five million," he said once he'd lit up. Johns didn't believe that he wasn't paying just as much attention to where the mercs were as he had when he was "The ransom of a planet. Or so it was thought."

That caught the merc Boss flatfooted. "What the fuck?"

Hes-Am's eyes were calculating when he looked back up. "We had to do something. You can't evacuate a whole planet. Planets actually, as Prime gives light and energy to the rest of the system. Not in the amount of time that was allotted. Where would we have gone? Who would have taken us in?" The man shrugged. "Some suggested backtracking. That the Necromongers wouldn't revisit a planet they'd already decimated. But that was sacrilege. And impossible. We were stuck. Nobody would send help. Not once they realized where the comet was headed and what was hidden within."

"Fuck," Johns breathed again. Around him his crew was echoing the thought.

"Wait," Dahl said, as Johns tried to make himself believe the picture this man was painting could make any sort of sense. "What gave you the idea he was alive. How did you even know who he was?"

Johns blinked and stared, then shook his head. Of course. He'd been convinced for years that the fuck was still alive somewhere. But the rest of the Arm had written him off and gone about their way with no more than a single backward glance at the crash of the _Hunter-Gratzner_. So who could have pulled the bastard's name out of a hat after all this time and just _decide_ that he was worth looking into? Much less think that the man would have any inclination to help?

Hes-Am shrugged and took another pull on the cig. "That. That is a very interesting tale. But since we are pressed for time, and you are looking impatient, I shall sum up. There was an envoy of the Elementals here. She had come to observe some trade negotiations, or she told us. When the comet appeared, it was evident that she would have to cross its path to return to Quintessa."

He flipped his hand in a sort of 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' gesture. "I always wondered if she hadn't come here on purpose. Elementals and their calculations are after all…" He glanced up when Moss coughed, then shook his head. "She had an idea. She and Imam al-Walid. They and several of the other council members had been meeting. Trying to come up with a solution. And what a solution they found."

The cigarette was gone, ashes and embers and nothing left but what he could hold in his lips. Hes-Am stood, dropped it, and ground it out with his heel. "So many people," he said, staring at the flattened butt as if it held the answers to every question he'd ever asked. "And they proposed to put their fate in the hands of a man known primarily for the lives he'd taken. 'A different kind of evil,' Aereon said." He snorted. "Evil begets evil, but an Elemental does not think in terms of faith. She should have at least considered his ability stay out of prison as a hindrance instead of an asset."

Johns glanced over at Dahl. Her jaw was set and her eyes were hard. She wasn't invested in this hunt on a personal level so much as she took it as an insult that they hadn't been able to find hide or hair of the man in all the time they'd been looking. And here, on one of the most populated and peaceful planets in the known galaxy, had been someone who had at least had an inkling of how to find him.

"So what happened," Moss said into the quiet. "Riddick was declared dead. Why put up the sheet?"

A bitter smile flickered across Hes-Am's face. "Ah. But Imam, the pilgrim, he had met Riddick. Just before he came to live in New Mecca. He had never mentioned it before, nor had his ward, though they arrived together bearing marks of great troubles. And he never told us after, though I tried to ask him. My friend." The man looked down at his maimed hand. "In truth I cannot blame him. It is hardly the sort of knowledge one wishes to become common; that you are on speaking terms with a murderer."

He formed an awkward fist and looked up to meet Johns' eyes. "The sheet went up. A few mercenaries answered the call and got the little information Al-Walid had on Riddick's whereabouts. But only one, a Toombs, sounded as if he could actually accomplish the task. He and his crew set out for UV-6. There, they must have found Riddick. Or he found them. On the eve of the invasion Al-Walid sent out a call. Those of us on the Council who knew what he and Aereon had done went to his home in answer. In secret, because there were several Council members who thought that we should have closed the planet off and acted as though being turtles would save us."

Now Johns felt like sitting down. Proof. Actual proof that Riddick had been alive. Had been here on this planet. No way he'd been killed in the invasion. Cockroaches had shorter lifespans than this fuck. But where the hell had he gotten to? He could be _anywhere_ by now, fuck it all. For all they knew, he'd gone back to UV-6. If he'd ever been there to start with. It wouldn't be unheard of. If he'd been there the whole time, then maybe he'd be counting on its weather to keep most of the hunters away.

"So what happened," Dahl asked. "He come and save you all? Or tell you to fuck yourselves?"

"Both."

Johns blinked.

"First he refused. Told us, rightly, that it wasn't his fight. For all our desperation, I cannot blame him for that. The only thing that was to our advantage was the nearness of the Necromonger fleet. I believe that he did not manage to make it off planet before they launched their attack.

"Nobody is really sure what happened that night. The invasion came. Al-Walid died sometime in the middle of it. But his daughter kept insisting Riddick had saved them. Kept saying the man with silver eyes had guided them through the dark. We gave her the credit one gives children. Riddick had taken out a detachment of police sent to capture him as a spy and disappeared into the city just prior to the invasion. None of us expected he had stayed past the initial barrage. The Necromongers were more concerned with rounding up people on the ground than they were in closing off the skies."

Dahl just huffed and crossed her arms as the man stopped talking to stare at the room around them. Johns was starting to wonder if the man was brain damaged somehow. Just to be on the safe side, he signaled Moss and Lockspur to go check the perimeter. No sense in letting someone sneak up on them if all this guy was doing was stalling them in place. Quietly as they could, the men slipped off.

"And then," he asked, when Hes-Am didn't look like he was going to keep going.

"And then someone kicked over the hornets' nest. Some say that Riddick appeared here, in this room, the morning after the invasion. Issued a challenge to the Lord Marshal and bested one of his warriors." He started for one of the pillars at the other end of the room, and Johns and Dahl shadowed him carefully. He seemed oblivious to the fact that they didn't trust him. "I was not there of course. I was attempting to keep away from the patrols." He lifted his hand and waggling the remaining fingers at them. "Imam's daughter was very…adventurous. And too trusting in the myth of the Riddick who saves lives, even though by that point he had left her and her mother."

Johns shook his head. Will had had the same sort of blind faith, only it had been in his father and not a murderer. What he wouldn't give for him to have kept some of that faith, some of that trust.

No. That way lay dragons, and he couldn't afford to lose his focus. Not now.

There was a panel set into one of the pillars, and their guide pulled out a keypad from a slot below it. A few taps, a little bit of adjusting, and he stepped aside for them to see. Johns frowned. On the display was a capture of space, with the contrail markings of a supra drive flaring across the screen in muted golds and greens. What the fucking hell?

"There are rumors. Only rumors, because so few have survived and those close enough to the Necropolis at the time were either dying or about to enter that state. But there are rumors. That shortly after Riddick entered the flagship he came out again. There was a troopship in pursuit, but it was shot down." Hes-Am shrugged. "There was certainly a crash. We still have not been able to remove the ship from the building it landed in. And some who know of such things say there are marks of missile having hit. A missile that our forces did not use." He waffled his hand back and forth. "But such is not my area of specialty. This trail appeared shortly thereafter. One of the few remaining satellites picked it up." He reached over and tapped the screen. "There is very little in that direction."

"Except Crematoria," Johns muttered, zooming in on the image and studying the stars in the background. "Triple-Max. Never been a breakout."

"Yeah," Dahl snorted. "Because nobody's dumb enough to get caught anywhere near the surface of that place. They wouldn't even need guards, not really. Only thing keeping that place staffed is inter-space law saying convicts have a right to eat. That and someone's got to take delivery of supplies"

Johns didn't care. He was already making calculations in his head.

Finally. A real lead.


	3. Found

Found

The pain was the one thing she was certain of. It throbbed through her with every involuntary shift of her body, with every breath, with every heartbeat. She'd lost track of how long she'd been enduring. All things considered, she didn't think it was ever going to end. So long as those fucks kept the Medstation running, she'd be like this forever.

What she wasn't certain of was time. Of how long she'd been like this. She knew when it had started. Knew what had happened to put her in this state. A gut shot. That big, muscled chunk of manflesh looming over her and not even bothering to put her out of her misery.

Riddick. Fuck him anyways. If she'd been thinking at all she should have gotten him to kill her somehow. Pissed him off. Hell, spat on his shoes to see if anything could penetrate that absolute wall of Don't-Give-A-Fuck that he seemed to have up. Instead, she'd laid there and relied on snark. On bluster and bravado. _Hoping_ he'd put her out of her misery before the inevitable set in. And the arrogant fuck hadn't even given her a second look.

That should have been her first warning that she wasn't going to be let go or allowed to die. While he'd been off with some of the others, raising the guardhouse and plotting his escape, she'd been losing consciousness. Last thing she remembered was a mention of a match.

And then pain. Deep driving needles of it. She'd been tied down. Wrists, ankles, head. The thick air of the prison had wrapped around her like a blanket; and she'd come to the realization that she'd been stripped from the waist up. That should have been her second clue. But she'd gotten over being body shy ages ago, and there had been fire in her gut and electricity in her brain and she'd been screaming so loudly she was making her own ears ring.

She fucking hated Medstations. But she had learned how to take what they dished out without shrieking like a little girl anymore. She'd made more than enough trips to that mother fucking table to have figured that much out.

There was a scuffle of boots on concrete outside the door and she pulled back into the shadows as far as she was able. But nothing more came of the noise than a few murmured words. Guard change then. Though she hadn't decided what made them think she'd get out of here with hands and legs shackled and less than two meters of slack in the chain. They'd taken all her gear, leaving her with just the pants and shirt, and made sure the only things nearby were the john and the pile of blankets she slept on.

There wasn't even a bed. Skinner had appropriated that as soon as he'd clawed his way to the top of the pecking order. The only reason he hadn't claimed this room outright was that it was one of the few the prisoners had been able to jimmy the lock on.

And he'd needed some place to keep her. To control access. He doled out her 'favors' like he was a fucking king or something. Like managing to kill whoever tried to come after him somehow made him better than the rest of them. Like being able to intimidate and bully the dregs that were left after Riddick took the others made him special. Everyone here was a lifer. Everyone here deserved this pit. But there was a reason they'd been caught and it wasn't because they were smart enough to escape. Not like that fuck Riddick.

She should have never taken the job. Never agreed to work with Toombs. She could have done anything. Gone into private security. Signed on with one of the units of shock troopers who were getting ready for that big invasion back on Helion Prime everyone had been so worried about. Hell, she coulda taken a job shepherding some of the refugees who got out ahead of things. It would have been tricky, but not all that hard. Making sure they got on ships that were actually going where their flight plan said. Keeping them alive at the other end until they got their feet back under them. Some of them would have even hired a woman and not expected her to pay them for the privilege on her back.

But no. She yanked at the chain attached to one arm, more out of habit than anything. Instead, she'd signed on with that shit-fuck of a crew going out to answer some merc sheet for an escaped convict and murderer. She should have known. The minute she set foot on that ship, she shoulda known. Nobody could expect a crew that disorganized to do anything but jerk off and chase her tail. They'd been so fucking slow out of the starting gate that she'd known, even before they went into cryo, that there had to be at least five other ships already sitting on that chunk of ice.

Another yank, this time with her foot. The metal links of the cuff rubbed and tore at the scabs there. But that wasn't enough to rate any cleaning up. Not unless they beat her senseless again. So fucking afraid that they'd killed their toy and wouldn't have anything left to do but each other and themselves. No soap here, but that didn't really matter to this breed of scum. So long as they kept her in one piece, more or less, they'd keep their jockeying for dominance to stabbing each other in the back and shoving each other's heads into lava vents.

Maybe, if she was lucky, she could outlast them. Wait till they'd killed each other off and be free of the endless rounds of rape, beatings, and Medstation visits. This last time they hadn't even bothered unstrapping her from the table before pulling out their dicks and lining up. She was the one thing they could all agree on, and she was so much easier to get to when she didn't have the marginal freedom of the room to try and escape in.

Not that she had enough strength to fight back. Standing up was becoming a chore, and if it hadn't been for the fact that the gruel they gave her once a day was so thin it might was well be soup, she would have succumbed to dehydration weeks ago.

Better that than what they'd done to Toombs. He'd been a miserable fuck ever since her first crew had hauled him and that other guy off the ice ball. But the noise he'd made when those hellhounds had finally gotten ahold of him had been enough to make her blood run cold. She'd promised herself right then that she'd swallow her own tongue before she let these bottom crawling shitheads turn her into critter food. She could think of a few people who deserved that sort of death, but they were all the ones holding her prisoner at the moment, so good fucking luck with that.

More noise in the hallway. Some distant shouts. The vent crawlers again, come to try and take out the gang that controlled guard rooms? Or were they here for some five on one time with her? Good thing the Medstation took care of things like STDs and internal infections. If it hadn't, she'd probably still have the clap, syph, and sixteen varieties of fungus all vying for supremacy in her body. Just one more thing she didn't have any control over.

Just in case, she plastered herself against the wall, warm with the activity of all the lava behind it, and braced her feet. She didn't have much strength, but she wasn't about to take the abuse like some submissive bitch. Those sulfur covered freaks were the worst of the lot, and the inevitable broken arms were always worth seeing them stagger around with blood pouring out of a busted nose or lip. Small victories.

But the door didn't open and the noise kept getting louder. Gunshots? She'd thought they'd used up all the ammo getting rid of most of the hellhounds. And then each other. Had they finally broken into the armory? Had, God forbid, the Company made a supply drop and not realized what had happened down in the prison?

Right outside now. Screams of pain. Skinner trying to get his men to regroup. Then on down the corridor. She didn't know how far it went into the planet's crust. She'd never gotten further than this door. She hoped that whoever was killing who out there, none of them could make it to the Medstation before they fucking croaked. Or if they did, it refused to work. That it would finally be out of raw materials. Then maybe when the winners showed up for their victory celebration and nightly beating, maybe this time she could just fucking die already.

The noises were faint now, but the gunfire hadn't stopped. It had gone from the stuttering of automatics on 'spray and pray' and shifted into something much more precise. Cover fire, unless she missed her guess. And here and there, a shot or two from someone who knew what they were aiming at. Just because she'd fallen to the bottom of the barrel didn't mean she didn't have the training to make a guess at what was going on out there.

So when the door slid open and one of Skinner's men staggered in, covered in blood and reeling from both a leg and shoulder wound, she didn't waste any time. He was a deader; arteries hit, and so distracted by trying to stay upright that he seemed to have forgotten she was in the room. She couldn't get to him, and lunging at him was only going to draw attention. No sense in giving him someone else to shoot before his heart finished emptying all his blood on the floor. So she crouched on the balls of her feet, braced herself against the wall as her head swam, and waiting for him to get it over with.

It didn't take long. And she got her first bit of luck since the Toombs had told his newly inherited crew exactly who he was hunting. The bastard tripped over his own feet, toppled over backwards, and very nearly delivered his gun right into her lap. His breath was labored, she could see his eyes glazing, and there wasn't anything he could do to her, even if he could keep his grip on the weapon. With a grim smile, she lunged for it, too impatient to be sneaky and too desperate to hope she could move slowly and not get caught by whoever might still be out in the hall.

Stars and black bursts of nothingness swam in front of her eyes. She found herself on her knees with the gun in one hand and her other just barely keeping her from eating concrete. Sheer determination; that was all she had left. That and this gun which, at the moment, was just as likely to pop right out of her hands the minute she pulled the trigger. Fuck, but it was a heavy.

She was so dazed she didn't even hear the footsteps. Skinner's curses registered in her ringing ears far too late. Next thing she knew he had grabbed a fistful of hair and was dragging her to her feet. She yelped in surprise and flailed, but all she managed was to land an elbow in his bony ribs. He threw her up against the wall and he felt her other wrist bend backwards. She kept hold of the gun by the barest of margins, but couldn't get her fingers to work themselves around the grip or inside the trigger guard. His snarling growl drove straight through her eardrums and lit the fight or flight instinct that she could never seem to reign in.

She felt a trickle of blood start to creep down her forehead. Her feet tangled as he flipped her around and shoved her back against the wall and she nearly went down again. One gnarled and burn scarred hand wrapped around her throat, bracing her, lifting her further. She clawed at his arm, tried to crawl her fingers around the massive grip of the gun weighing, and wished she didn't have a nose. He was breathing into her face. Blackened and rotten teeth added their stench to whatever it was they made that fucked up prison tea with, and the rest of him was just as bad. Grime. Old blood. Sulfur. Had he gone and rolled around in one of the lava vents before he came up here?

Some animal part of her mind gibbered as his dirt engrained face gaped in a feral grin. She couldn't damn him to Hell. This place was_ worse_ than Hell. Sending him to the surface of a _sun_ would be kinder than what this pit dished out. How in the name of little green apples had Riddick survived? _What_ was Riddick that he'd made it out of here like a commanding King with an army at his heels?

Get your fucking mind back in the game, she snarled at herself, just as she managed to get her hand around the gun grip. He was crushing her throat, again, while his free hand tore at the laces in the front of his pants. She could make out a word here and there, around the missing teeth and split lip. Who had hit him? And could she thank them?

"Gonna get my fill a you bitch. Gonna get one last screw in 'fore they pulp my innards." There went the pants. Out came the dick. She could feel it against her leg, and every atom of her being wanted to crawl away in revulsion as he started pulling her shirt up and hooked his fingers in the hem of her pants. They shredded, and her hindbrain whimpered.

The half of her that had spent years in training, apprenticed to some of the best mercs in the business, told her hindbrain to shut up and go hide under a rock if she was going to be so fucking useless. She had a weapon now. Finally. No false bravado and false fronts here. Sheer desperation was going to have to win the day.

He'd gotten a knee between her legs and was trying to force them apart. Stupid fucking moron. Hadn't even checked her for weapons. So focused on his dick and what he was about to do with it that he hadn't even registered the dead man on the floor. Or maybe he had and he just didn't give a shit. Either way, she had a chance. And she didn't have to take this. Not this time and never again.

"Gonna get out of here," he was muttered. "They had to have a ship. Ain't no running on the surface for Skinner, oh no." There went his hand, and she could feel herself getting infected all over again. She could either keep her legs closed or get that god-awful gun up and balanced and she knew which was the priority. Just a little further, just a little.

"Gonna get me one last piece of-"

_Boom! Boom!_

The hand left her throat. She slumped down the wall and stared at the body as it landed in front of her. She'd gotten him. Right in the gut. The blood puddling around her feet was proof enough. But it was also faceless. Everything from the jaw up. Gone. What the fuck?

"Got one in here Boss!"

Blinking, feeling the side of her face burn as she lifted her head and groped for the gun she'd dropped, she looked for the source of the voice. A man, broad shouldered and skin darker than the dimly lit hall behind him. Black armor showed signs of wear. A pistol in one hand, up and aimed her way though, that got her full attention.

She cursed without heat and scrabbled for her weapon. No way. No fucking way was she getting drafted into another merc crew. Or military or police or even a set of guards. No way was she getting into another situation like she'd gotten into with Toombs. Letting that fuck hi-jack her crew had seemed like a good idea at the time. There wasn't enough money in the _galaxy_ to make her sign on to another bunch of yahoos out for blood and money.

She had to lean over Skinner's body to get to the gun. Shit. She didn't know how many rounds she had left. If she had any. She didn't know this gun. Didn't know its weight when loaded or empty. Just that it was fucking heavy.

But her training kicked in again, and she managed to get up and braced. The wall behind her was still as solid as ever, and she brought the gun up two handed and trained it on the bald and shiny forehead of the man. She'd decided she hated bald men. It was stupid and childish, but it would feel good to rid the world of at least one of them, since she couldn't ever get to that motherfucking bastard who'd left her here.

"Woah." The man lifted one hand and made a sort of 'settle down' gesture. "We're not here to hurt ya. Really."

She steadied her hand through force of will alone. "Really? Cause I'm not exactly one to trust, if you get my meaning."

"Would I have shot the guy trying to rape you if I wanted you hurt?"

What a stupid fucking question! She laughed and tightened her finger on the trigger, just a little. The pounds of pressure this thing took to decide to go off were ridiculous. "Wouldn't have been the first time someone killed to get in my pants."

"Moss, what the fuck are you doing? We need to clear these other rooms." Another man in the same black armor came around the edge of the door. A woman with sculpted features and cropped blond hair was right behind him. Again, same armor. But she held her big gauge like she knew what to do with it, and the dust and blood smeared all over her face did nothing to distract from the fact that under all that she was probably pretty enough to turn the head of any man in a room.

Moss didn't answer. It was obvious enough. The only question was; what now? The matchy-matchy uniforms spoke of enough money to spend on proper gear. Which meant these people were several rungs above the crews she'd been running with before she landed here. A higher class of fake badge, all hyped up on the power of guns and armor and a hunting permit? Or the real deal?

"What the hell are you three doing?"

She froze. She knew that voice. Not well, but she knew it. It had been years, but she couldn't forget the face that went with it.

Boss Johns shouldered his way through his crew, face just as dust and blood smeared as the rest. Frustration was stamped on every line of his face and his eyes were hard. Some of that disappeared when he caught sight of her, but he brought his handgun up to bear on her anyways. Fuck. She might remember him, but he'd probably didn't remember meeting her.

But her body was catching up with her, and the issue of who was going to shoot who and all the rest of it was dealt with by the simple solution of her grip on the gun going, her balance failing her, and a hard and decided plummet to the floor.

~LaF~

She didn't wake to pain. At least, no more than the usual. And that itself was enough to set the warning bells off again. Panic clawed at her chest and she groped for purchase on whatever it was she was laying on. The table. The mother fucking table under the Medstation. Holy fuck, they were going to let her see it coming this time.

She was halfway up and had swung one leg over the edge before she realized what the difference was. Stunned, she stared at her hands. Her wrists were raw, and some of the scabs were cracked and bleeding around the edges. But she was wearing pants, real pants. And her skin was cleaner than she'd seen it in…she didn't know how long. Her hair still felt stiff and matted, but someone had tied it back out of the way. What in the?

"Bout time you woke up. We were starting to wonder if you were just sleep forever."

Blinking, she looked up. Sitting backwards in a chair in the corner was the blond woman. She'd taken off the armor, revealing muscled arms and a buckled corset type thing around her waist. Shoulder holsters held twin handguns, and there were more weapons strapped to her hips, thighs, and even down by her ankle. Guns dominated the assortment, but there were at least three blades in sheaths at her belt and ankle. And that was just the visible weaponry.

This is the type of woman I wanted to be, was the brief though that fluttered through her mind. She squashed it. Mortal danger and all that. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. Or was that the volcano? She'd gone from bad to worse so many times she'd lost track of how far down the ladder she'd fallen.

"I'm tougher than I look," she said instead.  
The woman snorted. "That's not saying much, considering."

Point to her. While she was still trying to sort out a decent comeback, the woman turned and hollered through the open door next to her. "Johns! Lady's awake."

He appeared out of the shadows in the hall with a suddenness that sent her scrambling back across the table and almost over the other side. She caught herself just before she dumped herself off the edge and told her instincts to settle down. Not every man who showed up out of nowhere was going to tie her down and rape her. At least, not without her knowing about it. And if he hadn't so far, he probably wasn't going to any time soon. This was Johns after all. A man with one of the best reputations on Lupus 5. So long as he hadn't let money go to his head in the years since she'd known of him.

"Bit skittish," the woman commented as she propped her chin on her arms.

Johns hmphed and crossed his arms. "And you wouldn't be?"

"I wouldn't have let them chain me up like that in the first place."

That was fucking _beyond_ enough. "Why don't you get shot to hell and left for dead in a pit of murdering psychopaths and see how well you do," she snarled. She tried to ball up a fist and make for the woman, but whatever they'd done for her outsides; the rest of her was still operating at half capacity. If that. She felt her balance go and _knew _she wasn't going to be able to catch herself. Concrete floor, here she came. Next stop, Medstation. Again. Fuck it all.

And then strong hands had her by the shoulders, one set fine boned and slim, the other larger and heavier. They set her upright, steadied her, and she didn't miss the look they exchanged over her head. Weaving slightly, she chose to focus on the woman's face. She was a bitch, but at least she wasn't a man.

"How _did_ you end up here," Johns asked, as if she wasn't shaking like a hype under his touch. "You aren't the usual breed of Triple Maxx."

She snorted. "Merc. We were dropping off a bounty. Fucking Toombs. Should have just taken the money and gotten the fuck out while we still could."

Johns moved off, leaving the woman to help her back up on the table and get her body rearranged. Her hands were surprisingly gentle, given her snide remarks so far. In the door, one of the other mercs had just melted out of the shadows, and she flinched involuntarily. The woman eyed her sideways as her Boss talked with the man. "How long you been here?"

She shrugged. "When'd the Necros hit Helion Prime?"

_That_ got their attention. All three of them snapped around to stare at her.

"Little over two months back," Johns said, coming back over to loom. "What's that got to do with this?"

She glared at him and inched back. All their weapons were locked in and out of reach, but she still had her fists. He didn't follow, but he didn't back down either. "Had a target about then. Got out just after the invasion and we were going to drop him here." She stopped as the coughing started. Stupid fucking dehydration. She didn't know when she'd last eaten _or_ drank.

"Hold on." He turned and went back to the door, yelling for Moss and some water. Uneasy silence ruled as they waited, and she fidgeted with the hem of the shirt they'd stuffed her in. It must have been one of the woman's, because it was cut for boobs and waist and hips and the only female she'd seen around here had been that hellcat down in the pit. Prisoners didn't get spare clothes in these sorts of places.

A glass was shoved into her line of vision, and she remembered to take sips, not chug it. Moss eyed her as she took the first drink, and, satisfied she wasn't going to make herself sick somehow, left off his hovering and stepped back.

"Now," Johns crossed his arms as the other three ranged themselves behind him. "What guild are you with? And what happened here? How'd the prisoners get control of this place and the Company not know?

So she told him. Guild name and rank. Getting stuck out on Helion 5 and taking up with Memphis and his piece of shit crew. Johns cursed when she told him where they'd been headed. Cursed with less heat when she told him how they'd picked up Toombs and how he'd taken control. One point five million. Retirement money, if you chose the right backwater to set down in. And Toombs had obviously had the brains to get moving quickest. What chance did they have of taking this fuck on?

She might not have had a conscience in the conventional sense, but she did have the common sense to keep her mouth shut when it up in her face. No choice but to go along. And hey, money was money right? Toombs knew where the mark was; he had the fucking ship tagged with a tracker.

So there they'd gone. Straight into the teeth of the invasion. Losing the target. reacquiring him. Johns and his crew waited while she laughed herself hoarse. "Shoulda fucking known," she spat. The woman had come around the table and had a hand between her shoulder blades to help keep her upright. Guess that answered the question of whether or not they trusted her so far. Of course, there were a million different ways to disable or kill a person from back there too, so…

Johns raised an eyebrow. "Should have known what?"

"When the bastard just held out his hands for the cuffs. Should have taken my chances with the Necros. They convert you, not leave you bleeding out and dying in a Triple Max prison on one of the worst planets in the Arm." She spat again. "Don't know if he's just that lucky or if he fucking _engineered _the shit that went down. Stories they tell about him, wouldn't be surprised. One minute Vlad's yelling at Toombs about how the Necros followed us; next its guns and rocket launchers and then here comes Riddick. Takes the keys off my belt and fucking _leaves_ me there. Didn't even have enough humanity to fucking kill me!"

They'd all gone stiff at the man's name, but she didn't care. She was on a roll. All the rage and helplessness and frustration and fear of the past who knew how long was boiling out, and she wasn't about to stop it.

"Motherfucking sonofabitch," she half shrieked. "Stupid asshole jerkoff and his fucking superiority complex. Had the whole fucking ride over here to plan this, you know? Bastard doesn't even go under for cryo! What sort of unnatural fuckery is _that_? And there he was, just standing there telling them what his plan had been. Get in, get out and leave everyone there to die! Motherfucking," she sputtered, and was horrified to discover tears running down her cheeks. Snarling, she scrubbed at her face and set her jaw, daring Johns with her eyes to comment on the fact that she'd just had a hissy fit in the middle of a bunch of strangers.

But the man didn't seem to have noticed. His face had gone harder than plascrete, and his eyes were staring at some point over her shoulder. Not at the woman behind her, but somewhere further. His hands on the back of the chair were white knuckled, and she could almost hear his teeth grinding. Around him his crew waited, and she could feel her heart working in overdrive to pound through her chest as she gasped for breath.

Finally he focused back on her, and the look in his eyes was enough to pin her like a bug. "You want a chance to get some of your own back?"

She blinked. Blinked again. He hadn't just said what she thought he'd said.

On the other hand, once she was back to fighting weight, she wouldn't be any kind of pushover. And he already had one woman on his crew. Not all that common when you got down to the brass tacks of the merc business. Most women who crewed up with mercs tended to get slaved out by crews looking for a quick buck. Better get the cash out of them while you could instead of lose money because they couldn't pull their weight. At least that seemed to be the consensus. But if you proved you could handle yourself, or go Guild from the get go and find a decent crew, and the women she'd met in this business could generally wipe the floor with all but the biggest of men.

She used to think she was one of them. But now?

Now all she had to go on was rage and revenge. It would have to be enough. Except. "Don't know that he's going to be possible to find. Or if he's even alive." She shrugged and tried not to look too pissed. "Last I heard he was talkin' about making a run overland for the hangar. Had a few others planning to follow. And the Necros." Couldn't forget those creepy bastards. "They were dropping into atmo about that time."

Johns snorted and hooked his thumbs into his belt. "Ma'm, I've been hunting that man just about five years now. If anyone lived running the surface of this motherfucking planet, it would be him. And if anyone can get away from the Necromongers, it's him. He's out there. Somewhere. And I'm going to find him." He leaned down to look her in the eyes. "One rule. No killing him till I've gotten some answers out of him."

She thought it over. There was no bad side, except maybe getting left here again. Or taken and dropped somewhere. And with the Necromongers running around, what place was safe? Might as well see how it went. "Deal."

"Good." He held out a hand. "The name's Johns by the way."

She dredged up a grin. "I know. You were one of the witnesses when I signed my Guild papers." He blinked, the woman laughed, and the other two men shook their heads.

"I'm Eve," she said as she gave his hand one firm shake and let go before her panic set in again. "Glad to be working with professionals again."

Author Note: Hello hello. Thanks for dropping by. Hope you've enjoyed this. I wrote this for a couple of reasons. First, for the fic event over at smallfandombigbang on LJ. It was a fun challenge. Tell a story in AT LEAST 10k words for a fandom with a small following. Hey, right up my alley! My problem has never been meeting a word count. It's been keeping the word count DOWN. Lol.

The other reason is that with the new _Riddick_ move that came out the end of last summer, I was having fun with the theories. Boss Johns was hunting Riddick for a while right? What happened during all that time. Wouldn't he have backtracked along our favorite Furyan's trail? Which made me wonder: Whatever happened to Eve. So this is an AU, sort of. But it's my own little headcannon.

And for those who have found my other fics, yes, this does take place in the same 'world' as the others. But since it doesn't have any of the characters from the HHYFN story, I'm going to say it's not a crossover. I planned for it to be able to stand on its own, as my verbal speculation.

Anyways, blah blah blah aside, here's the important part: They're not mine! None of the cannon characters at least. Oh how I wish!


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